We love the hints from Ancestry.com! While a majority of them are correct, here’s one that arrived via e-mail on Sunday for Celestia S Shackford

you have 100+ new hints in SHACKFORD/PARKES Family Tree. We’re always searching Ancestry.com for new information about your family history. This week, we discovered historical records that could shed new light on family members in your tree. SHACKFORD/PARKES Family Tree. Click on “View at Hints” to see what we’ve found.

Hmmmm.. This is interesting — Celestia Shackford, the daughter of William and Mary Ellen (Dame) Shackford was born in June 1837 in Barnstead, New Hampshire. We find Celestia in the 1850 census with her parents William and Mary, her siblings Harriet N, Alphonso, Mary E, James Chadbourn, and Walter S. She married Erza Emerson Worthen on June 7, 1860 and we find the two of them in the 1860 census. We know she died five years later on Dec 4, 1865 at the age of 28 leaving no children but Ancestry is suggesting a hint to the Social Security program that didn’t start until 1935 so we know something is off regarding this hint. We click on the hint to look further:

And when we compare the recommended source to the tree we keep in RootsMagic, we see that the source is not referring to Celestia, but to Elizabeth Householder, Erza Emerson Worthen’s second wife who had a child named Sarah Worthen.

So we click IGNORE because we should not match this particular source to Celestia S Shackford.

We also go into Ancestry and look up other people who are researching Celestia S Shackford. We review the sources they’ve attached to Celestia and notify them that they may have attached sources that belong to Erza’s 2nd wife to Celestia. And then we write this blog to tell the story of Celestia’s short life.

All posts on this website are a work in progress. We’d love to learn of any corrections or additions to the information shared. Also we’d love it if you’d like the post here or at http://www.facebook.com/shackfordgenealogy) as that helps share the post with others. Thanks!